Borneo

Fine, we are not actually in Borneo; we are in Vietnam, but we have some serious catching up to do and it is raining, which makes for good blogging weather.  So, Borneo.  Pretty great.  Borneo is a really big island (I think something like the 3rd or 4th largest in the world) so we just stuck to one area called Sabah, which is an autonomous region of Malaysia.  First stop was a place called Sungai Kinabatagan, which is a major river in the area. 
We stayed at this pretty cool camp that was really rustic.  We stayed six abreast in these shelters that had a roof but no walls, the whole place suspended over a swamp.  It looked like this:

There wasn’t any running water and the best bathing option was the crocodile-infested river.  Good enough.  We weren’t there for the amenities.  The river is known as a hold out for wildlife since the rest of Borneo has been slashed to make way for palm plantations.  That makes Kinabatagan an island of wildlife like the orangutan, proboscis monkey, crocodile, and lots of birds.  We saw them all.  It was really great.

This is a kingfisher—one of my favorite bird families since they are always so brightly colored.




Here is the proboscis monkey, so named for his giant nose.  Proboscis monkeys also get absurdity points for their giant bellies.  They are found only in Borneo, so that is pretty cool.







Even Sally got into the act.  Note the official biologist gear including muddy rubber boots, brimmed hat and binoculars.  Looking good Sally.





The forest around the camp was beautiful—a tangle of lianas that would have made Tarzan proud.
Plus it had things like this:



It’s called a lantern bug and they are fairly famous.  I mean, look at it.  Of course it’s famous.


One evening, we had some crazy clouds which deserve posting.  Am I right?








At night, a lot of things are blind so you can get really close, like to this kingfisher…


…or to this super rare primate called a slow loris.  They are related to tarsiers, which are another cousin of ours.  He looked sad to be having so many people paying attention to him.


Here is another fun mammal—a civet cat that looks like a cross between a raccoon and a cat.  This is the Asian plam civet which are famous for eating coffee beans, then pooping them out, which are then harvested and fetch a really high price.  Evidently, the stomach enzymes make the coffee taste better.  I didn’t need another reason not to drink coffee, but I like the critter.

And of course then there was the orangutan.  They are basically the reason we came to Borneo (I, Brian, of course led the charge to Borneo, but I thin that Sally liked it too).  These guys are amazing.  They are a riot to watch, and even have a range of facial expressions.



And let’s have some video from the star of the show!